Can I get technical advice from someone who isn't selling me something? Please?
I'm being forced to learn how to use QuickBooks Online, a program that is, actually, designed to torture anyone who knows what they're doing. It's really impressive how they managed to build a piece of software that seems to make less sense specifically BECAUSE I know how to do the tasks its supposed to "help" with manually.
Now, I will admit that I've been spoiled (for some definition of the word "spoiled") by my professional experience in automotive accounting, where despite the objective ugliness and non-intuitive-ness of the Reynolds and Reynolds software.... It's a massively powerful and beautifully detailed database powerhouse.
I just want to be able to retrieve even a FRACTION of the level of detail available to me from this type of enterprise software.
QuickBooks is, perhaps most irritatingly, cash-forward (I'm making this term up right now). All of its automation is centered around your bank transactions ........
I'm sure that's wonderful if you're doing cash-basis accounting. Since you actually really only care about when the money MOVES.
However, if you're doing accrual accounting.... The whole point is that I want to be able to add expenses/etc to the books BEFORE it hits the bank. Hell, I want to be able to record the expense the second I know how much something is going to cost.... Not when I'm able to pay it.
But I legitimately can't figure out how to be accrual-forward (the other term I've decided to invent just now) with quickbooks, when the entire fucking system is doing everything in its power to KEEP ME FROM DOING ANY ACCOUNTING AT ALL.
"Automation" is great, sure, whatever, I would love for QBO to be clever enough to learn to suggest categories over time as I feed it more data. Great. Lovely.
I'm pretty sure QBO is trying to eradicate the journal entry as a concept, and I just don't think that's going to work for me.
But more than that, I would love if when I search for information about how to use QBO I could find a SINGLE FUCKING WEBPAGE that contains information that isn't TRYING TO SELL ME SOME OTHER GODDAMN SERVICE.
The QBO documentation is... Well. When it's readable it just doesn't seem to contain any information beyond what the average 14 year old can figure out by reading the drop down menus. I get that like, a good portion of QBO's user base is technologically illiterate boomers or whatever.... But you'd think they'd provide any kind of documentation at all for accountants or potential "powerusers" of their goddamn software.
Is this because I'm used to reading github and opensource project documentation where I find it unusable because it's talking about technical, API, under-the-hood shit in such detail that I only vaguely recognize some of the words they're using?
I know that Intuit has all their dumb little fucking.... "Intuit Pro" training shit or whatever. But the other factor that no one is taking time to consider is........ not everyone wants to watch a video to learn stuff??? I just enjoy a nice webpage that I "ctrl+F" and/or skim through so I get a sense of what I'm dealing with before I commit to reading the whole thing.
I want to be able to REFERENCE the documentation so that I can find the information I'm looking for when I need it, and then I can take time WHEN I'M NOT TRYING TO DO ACTUAL WORK to go through all the how-to videos or whatever.
I'm convinced that every single person who's like "QBO isn't that bad" or "QB is pretty good, once you're used to it" is both a liar and a victim of stockholm syndrome.
There has to be something better than this. I refuse to believe that it has to be this way. I will not suffer to be ground down into the shape that Intuit wants me to assume so they can "process" me more easily.